Is there a more delightfully offbeat pop star than Darwin Deez right now?

It is highly doubtful. No other musician around would proclaim undying love for both Q and not U and John Mayer, or describe his sublimely addictive strain of pop as “a little bit “Thriller”, a little bit Dismemberment Plan”. Not many others would choreograph synchronized dance routines to Beyonce and the Bangles which erupt out of nowhere in the middle of playing live. And certainly, it would be hard to think of anyone else who can start a song by cribbing “Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star” as the opening line on one song, while rhyming “Los Angeles” with “televangelist” on another.

As befitting someone with such an unusual background (born in North Carolina to Meher Baba disciples, before going to Wesleyan in Connecticut, hating it, and falling in with the anti-folk Sidewalk Café crowd in New York City), Darwin mines a musical vein entirely his own. His songs are mostly stripped down and kept simple and unadorned (which figures, as he recorded the album in his own apartment using only a PC and a mike) but they pulse and throb deliciously with life and a rare wit.

Darwin Deez “DNA”